When Angels Prefer to Die
by thelittletree
Summary: Based in the timeline of my previous fics. What would Vincent do for freedom? POV of a subjective observer. The answer you come to in the end isn't always what it should be.


**When Angels Prefer to Die**

_Trust in my self-righteous suicide_ …  
– _Chop Suey_, System of a Down

* * *

Even when it was night-time and she had sent the evening shift home and she had checked every corner and locked every door, she still felt it. Someone was here, watching. Someone else. And she couldn't turn her back to that room for very long. Even when she had to answer the unpreventable call of nature, she never closed the door, even knowing that he could wake up at any moment.

She couldn't not watch him. He had frightened her too many times to let her put her guard down anymore.

Though he slept most of the time, now. She had spent the majority of the night going over their last conversation through what she hadn't written in her notes. It seemed to make things easier to bear, especially the silence, when she didn't feel so alone. Watching him sleep. With someone watching her.

Their conversations always started the same way:

"How do you feel?"

"Tired. Hungry."

She always fed him after they talked. Sometimes he remembered that; sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he stumbled to his feet and shouted and pounded on the walls, tore at his clothing, demanded to know where he was and what he was doing there, insisted for freedom.

But sometimes he remembered. He had remembered this time, and had even smiled a small, weary smile. It had been a long time since they had let him out of the room, but when these coherent moments came he was often more civilized than most of the people she worked with – the ones that made jokes and brought their friends to see him off hours and made stupid 'tests' they still weren't sure if he recalled later.

"What am I eating tonight?"

"Tuna casserole."

Nothing incredible, but his eyebrows had flickered appreciatively. "From your own kitchen, I assume."

"I wouldn't trust your palate to anyone else."

He had almost laughed a little. It had made her cry later.

"So, otherwise, how do you feel?" _Otherwise_. The word had become her euphemism for the creatures inside of him – the ones who had finally gotten bored of hunts that had essentially contained the same elements over and over; the ones who had gotten out of hand suddenly after years of obedience; the ones who had almost committed murder.

How were they?

"I'm not sure." He hadn't always been so honest with her about it. Not until it had become clear that they were both in this for the long haul, through the horror and the grind, and someone had to make it bearable.

And even then, not until she had gotten within ten moves of checkmate-ing him (or so he had said) when poker had proved too frustrating through the glass.

She had dreamed of kissing him one night, of taking him somewhere to make love to him. She had woken up, afraid to realize that she liked him, _liked him_, but it didn't matter because he had made a choice, the only choice, and it had been the room. She couldn't touch him. Not yet.

"I can't feel them tonight." He had rested his forehead against the glass, his mouth close to the speaker. "Except Chaos."

Months ago, she had made notes as he had spoken. Until she had realized how incredibly dehumanizing it was, to watch someone jot down your pain logistically in shorthand in front of you. So she had stopped, waiting to make her notes until he fell asleep. She wouldn't let anyone else have the night shift anymore. This was her time with him, when she waited (with baited breath, she couldn't deny) for the moments she could talk to him and offer a little comfort and provide a little sane conversation. There was no one else she would entrust him to between the hours of eleven and seven. He was so vulnerable here.

It seemed worse, too, because he had chosen it. And because it was too late now to go back, even if he wanted to give up and try something else. The room, the answer, had become his prison, and maybe forever. There was no telling anymore. They had been tricked more than once, Vincent included.

"Do you think they might be gone?" It hadn't been a regular question. Not until a few weeks ago had she even considered the possibility. It was like asking a parent about monsters in her closet, except here she wished more than expected optimism, even patronization.

He had taken a slow breath before letting it out. "I hope so."

She had nodded, as if she might make a note of it later. "Is Chaos reacting right now?"

"No."

"But you definitely feel him."

"Like a canker."

She had chuckled a little. Not funny, not really, but visible pity made him uncomfortable. "Okay, that's the script. Time to eat."

Besides the entrance/exit – locked, bolted, unbreakable – there was one little door in the floor. She had put the dish inside with a water bottle, closed the door, and turned a crank. And he had opened a door on his side and picked the casserole and beverage up. Neither of them could fit through the crawlspace in or out of the room. Chaos hadn't made him transform in almost three weeks, maybe finally accepting the trap for what it was. They hadn't seen the others in more than a month.

He had eaten, and then he had made himself comfortable to the floor. And for a little while neither of them had said anything as she had taken the dishes into the functional kitchen, always without turning her back. It was never a certainty that he would still be Vincent in the next moment.

"How long has it been?"

She had taken a breath and spent a few extra moments brushing her hair back from her face. "A week and a half." A week and a half of waiting for him to open his eyes and look around and be lucid. A lifetime and a half.

He had nodded and then had asked for things to wash with. She didn't turn her back, but he turned his at these times. And she always did her best not to glance up too often from her notes. Muscles and bones shifting in his back, under the skin where there weren't visible scars.

She looked up from her notes. He slept on.

She sat. And she watched him. And waited.

Three nights later, he woke up. And didn't remember. And it was hell, listening to him scream, trying to ignore the pounding, scraping of his arms against the glass, hanging on to her chair until he finally exhausted himself and fell asleep again in the corner furthest from her.

Chaos was eating his mind. Sometimes she was sure it was Chaos she was seeing then, maybe trying to trick her, knowing how it killed her to watch. Maybe without the power to change anymore, he had given up the torture of Vincent's body to torture her past her bones, into her core where nightmares brewed.

She hated Chaos. The depth of her hatred made her sure she had never really hated anything before.

* * *

Melissa?

Melissa?

"Are you all right?"

She started awake from a doze suddenly, horrified that she had fallen asleep. "Oh shit, I'm sorry … "

He was standing at the glass, though she could see a tell-tale tremble in one of his legs. Too tired to stand, but determined, she realized, to find out if she was all right. She had never fallen asleep before; but there had been so many nightmares in the last few weeks. She got up from her chair and almost went to gather her notes, stopped, straightened, and took a couple of steps before remembering that supper was in the fridge. She couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.

There had been someone in the corner, in her dream. Someone coming for him, waiting for the right moment.

"Just a second, I almost forgot." She grabbed the covered bowls quickly, never completely turning her back, and closed the refrigerator door. "Something special tonight." She had been hoping, hoping he would wake up. "It's penne with tomato sauce and parmesan, and pie for dessert."

He slumped his shoulders in defeat, his mouth softening. "Dessert."

"Absolutely."

He didn't protest anymore. He knew better than to try, when she already knew how much he appreciated it, just as she knew it wasn't precisely in her job description.

She walked toward him. "How do you feel?"

"Tired." He sighed and creaked a little as he lowered himself to the floor. "Hungry." He settled against the wall. "I had a dream last night."

She stopped in the process of sitting and raised her eyebrows. "A dream, wow. That's a first. What was it about?"

"Chaos. And my wife."

She took a breath as she settled herself and tried to ignore the chill in her stomach. He had been living a long time, it wasn't really a surprise. Though it had been nicer to assume she was the first.

"I dreamed she was here, as a ghost. Chaos tried, but couldn't hurt her. It was extremely … liberating."

She tried to keep her smile convincing. "That … seems important."

She cursed herself for her slip when she noticed him looking at her. He was smart. He had to have suspected. She silently begged him not to say anything, not to change anything, not to make things uncomfortable. She would rather be here than anywhere, especially alone in her cold, cramped apartment.

After a moment, he lowered her eyes. And she began to breathe again.

"Maybe your subconscious realizes that Chaos is losing power."

He glanced up again. There were brown flecks of color in his irises. His eyes had frightened her in the first couple of weeks, almost to the point of convincing her to quit, when she had thought the red must be blood, or a sign of evil. Now she thought they were probably the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. "Maybe."

She never asked him what he thought would happen if it was true, if demons could die of starvation. He was so weak now. Would he suddenly get better? Would he go on living in some city like everyone else? Somehow, she didn't like to think about the future, though she knew it was selfish and horrible of her to want to keep him here. Here, where he was trapped behind glass, where people could stare and take notes. Here, where he had to depend on others for his basic needs.

Here, where he gave her purpose and helped her forget all of the reasons she had left home; where she could be busy working, earning money (which was all they seemed to care about now), all the while waiting for his eyes, his smiles, his conversation. If she had known beforehand what this job had entailed, she wasn't sure she would have taken it. Now she couldn't imagine where she would be without it.

"Can you feel him?"

He shook his head and yawned. She smiled and opened the door in the floor.

She didn't have to be rich, smart, or beautiful. All she had to be was here, for him. Waiting. Her someday was coming, and they would all see.

"First course, coming through."

He didn't stand very often anymore. He crawled to the door. Nothing he did seemed to take away from the presence he had. He could have slithered on his belly. She would have felt the same. She had seen him weep. She had seen him vomit. She had seen him bleed. He was the most humanity she had ever seen in one place, and he never seemed ashamed about it.

She thought he was very brave, to trust himself to strangers. The rest of the world seemed blind and dull in comparison.

* * *

He didn't wake up again for weeks, and she was sure it was the worst thing she had ever lived through, though nothing could keep her away. He slept, he screamed and ranted, he begged to be let out, he cracked bones on the walls. He could smell her blood; sometimes he would repeat it, over and over.

Her nails were bitten down to nothing, until it hurt to hold a pencil in her hand. Revising her notes had became a punishment, a penalty for her feelings, for selfishly wanting it to stop when it was part of the cure, for being afraid of him when he wasn't himself. For sometimes feeling pity for the thing he was when he wasn't himself.

She began to have worse nightmares during the day. There was someone in the corner of her bedroom, but with the drapes closed to shut out the sun there wasn't enough light to illuminate them. They kept speaking, whispering to her in a voice she couldn't understand. Though she suspected it was better not to understand.

The next night was bad. Not just bad; the worst. And the longest. He threatened her. He described killing her. He stared her right in the eyes and scratched his arm, over and over again. And when she finally put her head down on the desk, breathing and trying not to let him know she was crying, trying to remind herself that the cuts would be gone before they could seriously hurt him, he hit the walls and screamed and drizzled blood on the floor, everywhere.

He woke up that morning while she was putting on her coat, as the shift was changing. She almost lost her keys in her hurry to see him.

He was smeared with his own blood. His pupils were hardly more than black points, and she could hear him breathing through the speaker. He was sweating, too, she realized. Heavily.

"Vincent. Oh my god."

He glanced up at her, squinting through damp lashes. She waved a hand at the day staff to turn down the lights.

His eyes shone in the dark.

"How are you feeling?"

She heard him swallow. "How long … " He took a sudden shivering breath and she saw his shoulders twitch as he seemed to try and huddle into himself. She opened the door in the floor and sent her coat over before going to look for a blanket, something.

She found a thin, musty comforter, probably from other night-shifts when this room had been used for other, more distasteful things. It had once been an infamous detention center, she knew, though most of that old building had been torn down. This room had been spared when Vincent had approached her employer. He had put down a lot of gil, too, if rumors were to be believed. They hadn't even had time to really clean it.

"Put these on," she insisted, seeing that he hadn't opened the door.

He didn't seem to be listening.

"Vincent … " She sighed and lowered herself to the floor, feeling helpless, and angry, and so useless. "What can I do?" It was almost a moan, and she remembered with a prick of embarrassment that they weren't by themselves. It was morning.

He looked away, toward the door. "How long has it been?"

"Will you put the coat on first?"

He didn't move.

She sighed and heard a chair being pulled out behind her. "Three weeks."

He suddenly seemed smaller than she had ever seen him, shoulders hunched, arms crossed firmly, metal over flesh.

In that moment, she knew. She wasn't sure exactly what gave it away – maybe his particular stillness in all of that blood, like a traitor waiting for someone to point the finger – but she knew. It had been leading up to this from the beginning, and no one had seen fit to tell her. Maybe it could have been prevented; they could have brought doctors in, anything. But no one had done that. And she knew that had been a part of the plan, too.

"No." She shook her head. "No."

He didn't reply.

Day-shift Gerald stopped her with a meaty hand on her arm as she hurried by him. "It's my shift, McGillis. Go home."

She stared at him, disgusted and angry at the deception. And at herself, for having been foolishly naïve enough to accept lies that hadn't even needed to be voiced. "You're not going to call him," she accused.

"No, I'm not." He was smirking. "Stache must've thought your sensibilities were too delicate to handle the truth." Gerald had made no secret of the fact that he thought she was pathetic. There had been so many clues.

She yanked her arm away. "He's a human being, fucker."

"And that's been your biggest problem, dumbass. He's a human being, and this is a job. This is a prison for fuck's sake, not a five star hotel."

She couldn't stop crying as she drove home. The first thing she did, once she stepped in the door, was pick up the phone.

It was early. It took three rings for Stache to pick up. "Hello?" There were kids shrieking in the background.

"It's killing him."

"Excuse me?"

"It's killing him, and no one told me."

"Oh. McGillis." She heard him sigh, like he had been waiting for this moment as an eventuality, and the noise from the kids faded. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"Help him."

"We are helping him."

She had been taking her shoes off. She almost threw one at the couch. "By letting him suffer?"

"We can't open that door. What do you want me to do? Send over some aspirin?"

She took a breath and forced herself to sit on the armrest of a chair. "I think Chaos is weakening," she told him, knowing he wouldn't listen unless she could present things rationally. She was not in any mood to hear another lecture about being too emotionally attached. "I think it might be safe … "

"We thought it was safe last time, too. We can't risk it."

"So we're just supposed to watch him die?"

"There's nothing we can do. He knew this might happen. It's no surprise to him. I know you don't want to hear it, but he's my boss. He's the one who paid to put himself in there. This is the job he's paying me to do, and you."

She was crying again, and she hated it. "I can't just watch him die," she confessed angrily.

"Then you're fired."

She inhaled sharply. Her apartment suddenly seemed too small to keep her.

There was silence for a moment. "I told you in the beginning not to get too attached. I thought that was warning enough." He sighed suddenly, and she remembered his hand on her shoulder; his eyes, even after years of cleaning up broken shadows, had seemed strangely torn, defeated. "Oh hell, I wanted to tell you … "

"Why didn't you?" she interrupted.

Another pause, this one longer. "He asked me not to."

She opened her mouth, disgusted, ready to protest the absurdity of such a statement. But then she found that she could believe it. "Why?" Crying again. She knew why, of course. She was the one who would know best. Human, human, human.

"Why don't you ask him?" His tone had become that of her employer, and she knew what was done was done. The conversation was over. When he continued a moment later, however, he had gentled his voice. "I'm sorry, Melissa, I have to get my kids to school."

"Yeah. Sorry for the early call."

She sat on the arm of the chair, wearing one shoe, for half an hour before she remembered to hang up the phone. After that, there was only one thing left to do.

* * *

When she arrived, she found him sitting in exactly the same position she had left him in. Gerald was in the chair at the desk, listening to a game on his transistor, eating a toasted sandwich.

She marched past Gerald to the room and knocked on the glass. It was the only time she had ever done that, and a part of her regretted it when he turned his head to look at her. Like an animal in a cage, and she was trying to get its attention. Like he didn't have a name, and she couldn't have knelt down and whispered it.

"McGillis, you're not supposed to be here," Gerald called out over his game.

"I'm not staying long," she replied, refusing to release those red eyes as she said it. "I've been fired," she added after a moment.

Vincent's expression didn't change, and she remembered the first month, before she had seen him smile or heard him speak, when he was just a stranger. A cold, frightening, diseased stranger.

"Actually, I quit," she amended, not breaking the gaze, determined to see him flinch.

He didn't. He lowered his eyes, and his voice was like she had never heard it before. "I don't blame you."

She wasn't completely sure what she had expected him to say or do, but his quiet acceptance made her angry. She wasn't sure why she had come. She had wanted him to know how he had hurt her. It was defeating to realize that he already knew and was probably sorrier than she could believe.

But she could leave now. She could leave and never come back. She was sure for a moment that she was going to.

But then she was crouching down, and she knew his little omission had done exactly what he had wanted it to do. "I'm not going anywhere."

He turned away.

"Do you hear me?"

He didn't move.

"I'm not going anywhere," she repeated, louder.

It startled her when he struck the glass with the side of his fist. She had been leaning close enough to fall back from the balls of her feet in surprise. He didn't say anything. But instead of letting the impact have its recoil, he left his hand where it was, his fingers relaxing. And then he lowered his arm, and there was blood on the wall from where he had ceased to heal.

She scrounged up some bandages and was surprised when, instead of putting up a fight, he dutifully taped up his wounds. She ignored Gerald until he ignored her back, and slept there until almost noon.

* * *

She went home long enough to shower and make him something to eat. When she came back, she found things as she had left them. They ate in silence.

The evening shift left at eleven, and once she had cleaned up the dishes she began to look for other things to do. Vincent had wrapped himself in the blanket. Eventually, she sat by the speaker, even though he had moved himself into a corner, his back supported between the two walls, not looking at her.

"How do you feel?"

He didn't answer; she could barely hear him breathing. He had to realize how selfish it was of him to shut her out for his mistake, she thought. "I don't have to be here, Vincent. Do you really want me to go?"

She saw his shoulders slump an involuntary inch, and knew it was the closest he would ever get to apologizing. Or to asking, begging, pleading with her not to go, not to leave him alone. And suddenly impatient with the stupid, awkward silence, she asked him the first question that came to mind, one of the first she had wanted to ask in the beginning. "What are the notes for?"

There was a long pause. "What?"

"The notes. Why do we take notes? You're the boss, aren't you? You're the one in charge of all this."

He shifted in his blanket and she waited to catch his eye. But he didn't turn. The charade was over. It was all over. There was nothing left to do now but wait.

"In case there are others," he finally muttered indistinctly.

"What?" it was her turn to ask. What was he talking about? What others?

"Others, like me. I'm finishing the good doctor's research for him. In case there are others looking for a cure."

In case there were others. She wanted to scowl, but it came out as a strangled sob. He was stupid. He was brave. He was lonely, and desperately selfish, and imperfectly human, just like everyone else. Damn him. She had never been in love before; she also had no one. He had taken advantage.

She would hate him maybe, one day, when he was free and she was not.

"Can you feel him?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head.

"Not at all?"

"No."

She blew a breath out and leaned against the glass. "Do you want to wash?" She wondered belatedly if he had even noticed the blood.

"No. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter," she insisted. It was her job. And though she could have let him descend into his isolation, into his deserved culpability until the end when it would be just as much punishment for her to watch in silence as it was for him, she wasn't going to.

He turned to look at her, his eyes dull and briefly searching.

He had lived a long time. He had had a wife, and had outlived her. Maybe he had had children, grandchildren, on and on, burying them and burying them until he had finally broken free to stop the unending death. She had probably been the first in awhile, in any case, to look at him long enough to see his reality. Not that it was an excuse, exactly, if she had tempted him. But maybe he had been afraid. Maybe it was just hard to die alone.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled suddenly, and she remembered hearing stories about the penitentiary being haunted. Someone was in the corner again; she could feel them there, watching, waiting. Waiting _for_ _him_, maybe. And that seemed more likely. Death was not hovering, watching, waiting from a corner. Death had been invited, coaxed, begged in, and everyone had known except her because he had been too smart, too proud, too stubborn to simply ask her.

It was hard to let go. But there was only one thing left to do, if she was going to stay.

"I'm still here," she told him, and touched the glass.

She could almost feel his surprised relief at the unasked for deliverance from a personal hell. And then he self-consciously turned away.

He worked to force himself to his feet, and she poured some water in the basin. Then she sat by the glass and didn't even try to pretend she wasn't watching as he peeled out of his shirt.

Thin rivulets chased themselves down his neck, down precise shoulders, down the bones in his back. Tiny, diluted snakes, red as dust. He favored his left side and she made an effort not to wonder how serious it might be. It didn't matter. He had chosen this. She had no key, no answers, no right to try and change his mind. But she could choose to stay, knowing what she knew. Brave or stupid, she wasn't sure.

Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.


End file.
